The village impact of machine threshing and implications for technology development in the semi‐arid tropics of peninsular India

Abstract

This study evaluates the dynamic consequences of machine threshing in the Semi-Arid Tropics (SAT) of Peninsular India. We rely on a panel of 30 cultivator and 10 landless labour households to monitor, over five cropping years from 1975/76 to 1979/80, the impact of mechanical threshing on the village economy. Machine threshing did not significantly reduce costs, increase cropping intensity, or greatly harm labour. These results are strongly conditioned by the ecological features of the SAT. Their implications for public-sector investment in research on selective threshing mechanisation are drawn.Recently in this journal, Ghodake, Ryan, and Sarin assessed how improved cropping technologies changed the seasonality of labour demand, and concluded that labour bottlenecks 'could adversely effect the timeliness of operations critical to the success of prospective double-cropping and/or intercropping technology aiming at greatly increased food production ' [1981:43]. They expected 'to see increased demand by farmers for selective mechanisation operations such as threshing, where the major bottlenecks would seem to arise ' [44].When economists graph the seasonal demand for labour required by prospective technologies, agricultural engineers are usually quick to interpret 'the peaks' as signalling or reinforcing the need for research on selective mechanisation, in this case on the evaluation and design of threshing technologies for the Semi-Arid Tropics (SAT) of India [Singhal and Thierstein, 1979:2]. 1 Whether public sector resources should be allocated for research on selective mechanisation depends largely on two criteria -comparative advantage 2 and consequences. In this study, we focus on consequences and measure the impact of machine threshing on cost, employment and cropping intensity in a dryland village economy.

Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…But where the green revolution raised wages and increased harvested volumes, small threshers were rapidly adopted in Indian Punjab, the Philippines, and Central Thailand as soon as efficient designs were available. By the early 1980s the new threshers were penetrating into other South Asian regions (Walker and Kshirsagar 1981). As in the United States in the nineteenth century, these threshers are owned by private entrepreneurs who thresh on a contract-hire basis.…”

Agricultural Mechanization

“…In addition, it is easier to establish rental markets for operations that do not need to be done on all farms at the same time: threshing and milling are examples. It is thus no accident that rental markets for threshing machines were well established in the nineteenth century in the United States and are now common all over Asia (Gardezi and others 1979;Walker and Kshirsagar 1981). The contract-hire system for combines in the United States illustrates the problem of synchronized timing.…”